The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel)

by Beard, Matthew

  Kohel turned, looked at the shaking Luzhon, dared her to speak, laughed at her silence. He looked at Padlur, who Nergei could see was clearly listening but pretending not to, still binding his leg, busying himself with gathering up his weapons.

  “Wrong, little fatherless boy,” said Kohel. “You saw what you think you saw, but by the time you get a chance to tell anyone, I’ll have already told the whole village all they need to know, all they’ll believe instead.”

  Nergei knew what was coming next, knew but still couldn’t move his body fast enough to avoid it. In a lifetime of being bullied, he’d never once moved fast enough. He was so tired, drained of the bravery that had led him to protect Luzhon, of whatever had made the heat he had felt just moments before, that he had failed to feel again, and he did not, could not manage to protect himself from the incoming blow. Kohel’s blunt fist knocked Nergei to the burnt ground, and when Nergei tried to stand, the bigger boy’s heavy boot kicked him in the face, then stomped him again, until Nergei knew better than to try to rise. Unconsciousness was better than death, and so Nergei let himself slip away, so that he might live to bear witness to what he saw here. Kohel of Haven was no hero, and so Luzhon would never be his, because she deserved better. And would have better if Nergei could somehow make it so.

  And also, more importantly, Haven was under threat, and his master had to be warned. Creatures had found their way to the hidden village of Haven, perhaps accidentally, perhaps on purpose—and there was danger in the woods. The Old Stargazer would protect them, as he had so many times before. Of that, Nergei was sure.

  CHAPTER TWO

  With the Crook of Haven in his hands, Londih strode across the hard paths of the village, seeing the buildings behind the village’s wall in a new way, despite his long years of familiarity. The approach of the creatures—two of which had been returned to Haven, brought by Londih’s son, Kohel, and Orick’s son, Padlur—had put a fear into him he had not felt before, and suddenly every building looked like it might be able to be lost. There was the village blacksmith, the tanner, the cooper, and the cobbler. There were the long racks for tanning hides, and there was the smokehouse, for preserving elk and deer, fish and fowl.

  There were the homes of the few hundred villagers, the people Londih had been tasked with stewarding, and who—until today—he had never feared failing.

  Thank the gods for my strong son, he thought, wondering how he might have fared if it had been him in that clearing instead, surrounded by the bird men—the kenku, as he had been told they were called.

  He shook his head to clear his thoughts, frowned at his almost believing what he was sure was a lie. The two kenku, dead and awaiting them in the council chamber, had probably been killed by the youths. But Kohel had had no part in it, despite his claiming one of the kills. The boy was a braggart and his pride made him want too much too fast. He was unable to be patient, to allow the accrual of great deeds to happen over time, to add up to a great and heroic life.

  Kohel wanted to be a great man without delay, and Londih had not yet convinced him that was not the way it most often worked.

  And yet, what were the opportunities for greatness there? Londih had worked hard to be a good leader, but had he been great? By what trials had he been tested? Haven was, for all its remoteness, remarkably safe, and Londih knew it was the Old Stargazer who kept it that way, and not his own actions. Haven did not even have a standing militia or guard. There was little crime, and what there was could most often be handled by the village council members, who counted among their numbers some of the best hunters, and also the few men and women trained even haphazardly with bow and blade. The others were farmers or tradesmen, speculators and herbalists. They were not a difficult people to rule, nor to keep safe behind the village walls, or even in the area beyond them, where there were no hostile creatures that Londih knew of, and where even the wolves and the bears were docile enough, or else skittish.

  Always Londih had thought of those qualities as benefits of living in Haven, a far cry from the grotesque and seedy dangers of the city, still a two-week journey away, down the mountain and across the plain. Londih had visited there only a few times, and always he had spent his time awaiting the moment of his return to his home, to the mountain village he had been born in and imagined he would die in.

  With the appearance of the kenku raiders, he questioned for the first time whether Haven would always be there for him to live in, for his son to rule after he was gone.

  If the village fell, it would be his fault.

  If the village stood, it might be he who was venerated for the plan that saved it.

  Unfortunately, Londih did not yet have any idea what shape that plan might take.

  Haven’s council chambers were housed in a squat, round building made of mountain stone, a building used for no other purpose than the once infrequent gatherings of the council, and as Londih approached the heavy doors he once again regretted that, since he had become chief, the meetings had become more and more regular, and the drain on his time and energy was something he recognized as a certain kind of failure. When his father had been chief, there had been no hours of deliberation over every trifling matter, or even more serious ones. In those days, the Old Stargazer had walked among the villagers, often beside Londih’s father, and it was understood by the villagers that the chief—armed with the Crook of Haven, the staff that symbolized his position—spoke for them both.

  Since Londih had become chief, some twenty years before, the old man had withdrawn from the village, locking himself in his observatory and admitting few visitors. Even Londih—whose rule certainly extended to the observatory, at least in his own mind—had only rarely dared to enter, and then with great trepidation.

  The lone exception to the Old Stargazer’s absence had been the day he appeared outside the village gates, on foot, approaching with a bundle in his arms, a baby boy he had found somewhere upon the mountain.

  The mountain provides, the people of Haven all said, a proverb as old as the village, and true enough. It was not a luxurious place to live, but most of what the villagers might want could be grown upon its steppes, or else mined from the shallow veins of ore, so close to the surface as to make their acquisition easy even without taking pick or shovel to earth. There was good hunting all around Haven, and the city was too far to encourage greed with their resources. The people of the village took what they needed, traded amongst themselves, and despite the increasingly petty rivalries between them, Londih believed most of the people there were happy with their lives, and with his rule over them.

  The mountain provides, they said, but what had it provided the Old Stargazer, that day he went walking, as he never did, as he never had before?

  A child, pale and helpless, naked except for the flowing sleeves of the Old Stargazer’s robes, wrapped and folded around the tightly clutched baby, about which he would take no questions, and about which he would provide no answers, except to claim him for himself.

  The mountain provides, the villagers said, but that was not the whole proverb, either. The other half of the proverb was a phrase that few of the villagers ever said, but which was always implied, assumed to be understood by the listener, always someone else from Haven, always someone else who had lived their whole life behind those now low-seeming walls.

  The mountain provides, and the mountain takes away, the villagers said, and never would that seem more true than later, when Londih at last pushed open the doors to the council chamber, walking inside to find out what he had almost lost—a son, if nothing else—and what he and the others might still stand to lose, if they did not make the right decisions that day.

  Waiting for Londih upon the path to the council chambers was Pyla, Londih’s reeve, his second-in-command. Londih rubbed his forehead, instantly pained at the sight of his once-closer friend, who Londih himself had chosen to elevate to his position, and who he most certainly did not wish to speak to at the moment. The path was wide enough to walk
by most men without pause or insult, but Pyla was fatter than most, and yet still quick on his feet, moving to intercept Londih, to block his path with his bulk, his rotten breath, his scheming ideas.

  “I don’t believe the first fact of this story, Honored One,” he began, pressing close to Londih, “This is some kind of trick meant to—”

  “Meant to what, Pyla?” interrupted Londih. “Who would trick us, and in this fashion? No, this danger is more straightforward than any such scheme.” His headache moved quickly, bloomed. “The boys were attacked, and returned with these two bodies, creatures I had not seen before but that Orick recognized, from the old lore. Kenku, he says—raven men, and supposed followers of the Queen of Shadows.”

  “Kenku! The Raven Queen!” Pyla laughed. “When will we see these bodies?”

  “Orick brings them to council. The boys took the bodies to him first—not me, as they should have, as is my right as chief.” Londih wore the memory that slight in a tightened lip, a furrowed brow, but tried not to let his voice betray it, even as he could not help speaking it aloud.

  “It has been a long time since anyone thought to attack Haven, Honored One,” said Pyla, still dissenting. “Since before you were our chief, before your father was. Perhaps these creatures are just a raiding party, pushed up the mountain by some turmoil below. The weather, perhaps. Or a weak harvest or hunt. There’s no reason to assume that they mean Haven itself any harm.”

  “Perhaps, Pyla. But I do not think it will be that simple. Still, there is no need to panic, at least not yet. Haven has been defended before, will be defended again. Haven has its champion.” Londih gestured in the direction of the mountainside, the observatory.

  Of course, Haven has not needed the old man, not in many, many years, and who knows if he will come now, when we call. And if not him, then who? Londih stopped his walking, cursed below his breath, then cursed himself silently for these displays of weakness, hesitation. What would we say at the council? He did not yet know. While he thought, he stamped his staff’s butt into the dirt, leaned his weight hard upon it. He looked at the crowded crystals, the light within, then the feathers atop and around its crown. He considered how the staff was not what it appeared to the other villagers, was not what it had appeared to be to him when his father carried it, and how he alone knew the truth.

  Village legend was that the staff, the Crook of Haven, was endless, that its crystals would forever shine as long as the chief of the village were true to his people, and Londih had never thought to question that belief. Never, that was, until he followed his own father up the path at the back of the village, up the mountain face which created the village’s fourth wall. There the Old Stargazer’s observatory waited, and there his father went, carrying the Crook in his wizened arms.

  Londih had been the seventh of his father’s sons, and as such barely spoken to even as a teenager, because with six siblings ahead of him there was little chance that he would ever be called upon to become the chief, the Crook of Haven. Or so Londih had thought before he entered the Observatory uninvited. There Londih saw many things, skulking as he had been from the corners of the shadows. He knew to fear the old man, to avoid, if at all possible, making an impression on him at all, yet he followed his father and the Old Stargazer—old even then, even in Londih’s youth.

  Londih had followed behind his elders, and from his hiding places he saw the thousands of books, the tables cluttered with maps of nowhere Londih had ever been, because they were not maps of places one went. They were sky maps, of the stars and the moon, of the movement of other bodies which Londih did not know the names of, and would never know—even when he later returned to the observatory as a man the maps were just as forbidden, just as unknowable to one such as him. It was enough that the Old Stargazer knew them, and he had assured Londih they were of no consequence for him, after he had failed to understand the answer the old man had given to the only question Londih had ever asked, about the nature of the stars.

  “They are suns,” the Old Stargazer had said, a twinkling blinking in his eyes. “The stars are suns, and the sun you know is a star. You need not concern yourself with more than that, though. Considering this any further, Londih, will lead you away from your only real concern—when to plant and when to sow. When to hunt. Feed your charges and settle their little disputes, and leave the heavens to me.”

  Londih had not believed, but by then he could not question. By then he was a man, and he had seen what the Old Stargazer did to the Crook of Haven, how he imbued its crystals with a light that would only last a dozen years, that would need to be restored again. When Londih’s father had visited, the Old Stargazer had taken the Crook from his hands, then removed the feathers from the staff, replacing them with feathers he had gathered himself, because in those days the Old Stargazer still came down from his tower and walked among the people of Haven, although wouldn’t for much longer.

  When he was done he sent Londih’s father away, but not before calling Londih from the shadows, revealing his trespass to his furious father. Despite the treachery, the Old Stargazer calmed the chief, then anointed Londih the true heir of the Crook, so that the secret of the staff might not be revealed to the people of Haven, who might lose hope if they knew that no real power buttressed their chief, no deep power helped him keep them safe.

  Instead, there was only the trickery of the Crook, and the deep magic of the Old Stargazer, his wards woven deep into the mountain around them, and the knowledge of that had made Londih chief.

  Londih had become the next in line, but at what cost! His father’s heart, and then his sanity, as each year the Old Stargazer made the father send one of his children away, down into the city at the bottom of the mountain, with a sword and a shield and a bag of silver, to there seek the fortune that Haven no longer held for them, as they would not be chief.

  One day there were no more sons, no more daughters. No one left but Londih.

  And then his father was dead, and Londih was chief in fact as he had been in destiny, carrying the fading staff up the mountain path to the Observatory, so that the Old Stargazer might anoint him again.

  The Old Stargazer changed, became remote as the stars he studied. Then he’d had his own words for the other villagers, his own tasks among them, and it had been easy to believe he was a part of their village, that the task of astronomer was as necessary as cobbler or cooper. But no longer. The Old Stargazer was apart from them, his differentness was revealed, as apart from the other villagers as a sun is from a star.

  There was never sign of the old man, only his boy, Nergei, who Kohel had claimed to have rescued from the kenku.

  Kohel. The boy was as bad as Londih’s older brothers had been, and just as unworthy of the Crook, the station it symbolized, as Londih himself had once been. Unlike Londih, Kohel was an only child, and so one day the rule of Haven would be his. It was not an idea Londih enjoyed, but one he was trying to resign himself to, had been trying for the ten years since realizing his wife’s womb would produce no more children. With a son already born, there was no cause for divorce, and so Londih was stuck with his wife—a good problem, because he loved her—and also Kohel, who he did not, not always.

  Londih had grown into his position. He had gained the Crook through chance, and through an ill-considered curiosity, then a deadly deception to cover up that curiosity. He had been guilty, but after the guilt had fallen away, after the obligations of the great burden had inspired in him a dedication he was unaware had existed in him, after he had learned that he could be a leader, he had risen to it. In moments of gentler feelings toward his son, he imagined the same could also be true of Kohel. But always reality reared its harsh, unpleasant visage. The boy would never be anything but a boy. He was frivolous. He was unkind. He was endlessly, reprehensibly arrogant. He was spoiled.

  “Honored One,” said Pyla. “We are here.”

  Londih shook the memories from his head, rubbed the sadness they brought from his face. Before him stood
the doors to the village meeting hall, heavy and hewn of the oaks that grew high in the timber around Haven, their bark as tough as iron, as old as the mountains themselves. He took a breath, put his hands to the doors, shoved them open.

  Londih moved into the room without hesitation, letting Pyla trail behind him as they strode to their places at the long wooden table. Normally, village council meetings necessitated a large meal, and mead to keep the council members friendly enough to debate trivialities at great length. But there was no food spread on the table end to end, and no bottomless casks of strong, warm mead, either. Instead, the table was covered with heavy cloth, meant to protect the wood, and atop the cloth were the two dead kenku felled in the woods, one smoldering and one more whole, the wound through its throat the only cause for its state, its feathered limbs curling with the stiffness that comes to the dead.

  The kenku had been killed by his boy and Orick’s, if the young men were to be believed, and perhaps that was true of the whole one, which had clearly been shot with an arrow, presumably by Padlur. But the other? It was a lie, but Londih had not called it one yet, and now he wondered if he had it in him to support his son’s deceptions, as his own father had supported his, and perhaps this too was what it meant to be chief. When Padlur and Kohel had returned to Haven with the kenku bodies, Kohel had done the talking, explaining how they had been killed, and he had done so with confidence in his voice, as if he believed what he was saying when he described the flight of Padlur’s arrows, the skillful strokes of his own blade.

  The arrows were easy enough to believe, but the blade?

  Unless the boy’s blade had suddenly become enchanted with flame, there was no way it burned through the kenku’s torso, as something certainly had. And yet, so Kohel had claimed, and so Londih would claim too, for as long as he could.